Transcription
[Music] welcome to the your questions edition of the digital DJ tips DJ School podcast with me Phil Mor. Full of questions to help you improve your DJing, answers to things you didn't know you needed answers to. And it's a really varied of questions that have come in from our students that I'll be answering in this edition. Everything from the height of DJ desks, to dealing with imposter syndrome, to what effects to use to make mixes sound a little bit more flawless when you're moving around between musical styles. We really have covered a bit of everything. So thank you to our students who took part. If you'd like to have your question featured, then you need to be a digital DJ tips student. Head to the digital DJ tips website at digital DJ tips.com and find out how you can do that. I think we should just get straight in there with our first [Music] question.
Our first question this week is from a student called Steve, who wanted to know about the new Alpha Theta, which basically is the new name for Pioneer DJ Alpha Theta XDJ AZ controller, DJ system, All-in-one unit. And this has been released at the time of recording for about a day. And it's certainly the biggest DJ unit release for for several years, I would say. It's a very important piece of gear and much waited for in the DJ community. A lot of people have been waiting for for this company to make something that's that's got the power that is in this unit because they were beaten to it by a full five years by Denon DJ with their Prime Four, which was an amazing, and still is an amazing, in its Prime Four Plus, guys, an amazing standalone DJ unit. Four channels of control, a great screen, lots of features. Well, it's now got a true competitor in the market, which is this new unit, the Alpha Theta XDJ AZ.
But the question from Steve, far from being impressed, says, "My burning question is, why is there no mention of stems control on the XDJ AZ? Is it really true it hasn't got stems?" So stems, if you don't know, is where you get to press a button and isolate or remove things like the vocals and the drums and the music and so on from the track. So you can get an instant acapella or an instant instrumental, which obviously makes DJing a lot of fun. So the question is, why hasn't this all singing, all dancing, flagship new standalone DJ unit got that built in? And there's kind of good news and bad news here. So the background is, stems is one of those functions that has only really become possible thanks to really powerful processes in modern computing equipment. You know, funnily enough, one of the most powerful processes in anything in your life is going to be in your phone. And also the processors in very modern Intel, um, Windows computers and in the M series Apple computers have got the ability to do this. So they are powerful enough to let you do exactly what we've described, click a button and immediately, or or within a few seconds, you get access to the instrumental and the vocal and so on. The problem is that these standalone DJ units aren't yet at the stage where they can incorporate that kind of power. And so it means that having stems, having that built into these units that don't need to have a laptop plugged into them, is not really feasible right now. I mean, it's only a question of of when it happens, right? But right now, it's not feasible. And I wasn't expecting it to appear in this unit, so I wasn't surprised when it didn't. It's not in any of them.
But the good news is that that this new unit, the XDJ AZ, it works with Rekordbox and Serato out of the box. So you can plug it into your laptop, your modern laptop with that software running, and it will then gain that stems functionality that isn't there when you haven't got a laptop plugged in. So because these units are quite versatile, they can work with music on a USB, they can work with cloud libraries and subscription services, and they can also work with DJ software. It means that you can still use that piece of equipment to DJ using stems. You will just have to go down the software route if that's important to you. You know, the truth is that software is always going to be ahead of standalone hardware. It just is. Because it's easier to add a new feature to a piece of software and just map the controls somewhere on the existing hardware than it is to build it into a piece of hardware. And whereas, whereas nowadays, it is getting easier because these units have got firmware that can be easily updated to give them new features in a way that wasn't really possible a few years ago. It's still not as straightforward. And then you combine that with the fact that they just aren't as powerful internally. And that's the reason.
So the interesting thing about stems in the Rekordbox software that works with this new unit has been pointed out by one of our students here, Lou. Who says, "I just saw a video from Pioneer that they've stepped up their stems in the new Rekordbox version." Indeed they have. They've made them sound better. We haven't had time to test that yet, but we will be doing so in the next few days, uh, and reporting back on how good they are or otherwise. But yes, we have heard that they've upgraded the quality, which they needed to do because they were by far the worst sounding stems in any DJ software until now. So thank you for that reminder there, Lou. But we're going to be on that.
So our next question that came in from a student is from Vatel in India. And Vatel says, "I feel that my preparation and song selection is getting better, better. So it's a good start, and that I'm able to design fairly decent sound journeys. However, as I'm jumping a lot between genres and BPMs in my DJ sets, sometimes my transitions can be a little messy and disjointed. I was thinking that perhaps the use of some effects would help me to create smoother transitions, but I'm not quite sure which ones are best to use and how best to use them." It's a great question. So the thing with DJ transitions is that they live or die based upon where you change from one song to another, and what song you change to and from. If you get those two things right, then the actual transition you use becomes less important because the songs flow naturally anyway. And it's perfectly possible to DJ where you don't ever beat mix anything. You just literally transition, bang, on the beginning of a musical phrase into a new song, every time. And there are DJs who only do that and who are very, very good at doing that. Open format DJing kind of starts from there and says, "How can we add a bit more flair?" rather than starting from big, long, drawn-out beat mixes and saying, "How can we make it a bit more exciting?" Right? So there you've got the two edges, haven't you? You've got playing 90 seconds of a song and just cutting into a new one every 90 seconds immediately. And then you've got playing five, six, seven, 10 minute songs and overlapping them for minutes at a time to build up a a journey, a house music or techno or tech house journey that way. And somewhere in the middle is kind of the sweet spot where you can do a bit of everything. Everything.
But the question is, if you're doing that, and if the BPMs are changing, and if the genres are changing, how can you make it sound a bit less messy and a bit less disjointed? And you're quite right, Vatel. Using effects and using them judiciously and carefully can be a great way of doing that. So there's two that I would recommend to you. The first one is the echo out. So the echo out is where you locate an echo on your DJ gear. It doesn't matter where it is, doesn't matter. DJ gear has effects in all kinds of places. Find an echo. You want an echo that when you turn it on, it echoes every beat. So if your track's going along with a beat like this, when you turn the echo on, the beat carries on, but it just echoes out and disappears into the distance. So you can turn the echo on, and then a beat later, you can turn the track off, and the echo will carry on, and it'll slowly disappear. The good news there is that that gives you a beat that you know isn't going to change, that you can drop the new track in over. So the new track's ready on a beat. Any, but preferably one that makes sense, the beginning of a musical phrase would be good. And then you stop the on the incoming, the the outgoing track playing, and you engage the echo just before you do, and you hear that beat echoing out. And then after maybe four beats, or even eight sometimes, but four beats is good, um, on that fifth beat that follows there, you start the new track playing.
Another way of doing it, which is more extreme, but sounds really good because it sounds very natural, is to use reverb. Now, if you're not aware of what a reverb effect is, it's basically the difference between me talking to you now in a soundproof studio where there's there's no background noise, and me walking into a sports hall or a cathedral or a warehouse or some other big space and saying the same thing. There is a stairwell, because I like to take the stairs, not the not the lift. There is a stairwell in this. We're in a World Trade Center here. And so the World Trade Center has got the posh lifts, but it's also got the stairs, right? So I like to take the stairs. But the stairs, they put no money or time into making them, you know, cool or trendy or whatever. They're just they're just industrial stairwells. And and the reverb in there is so much that it's hard to understand someone else talking because you say a word and it goes up and down through the building. It's not an echo, you don't hear your voice come back at you. It's just that reverb, right? That is built into all DJ gear. If you engage a reverb at the point in a song you want to change to another song, and then stop the outgoing song dead, that reverb, that tail of sound will carry on sometimes for a few seconds. And it gives you a really expansive, big sounding ending that just sounds good because it's based on the music that was going a minute ago, but it's also kind of generic. And so you can then start any other track playing next. So as long as you've respected what I said, which is get the tracks right in the first place, no transition is going to save the wrong tracks. Then those two, echo out and reverb out, can help.
Now, these things are much better if you can see them and hear them for yourself. So I've got a couple of free lessons for everyone listening to this. If you head to the URL DJ tips. So one more time, DJ tips.com and then put a slash transitions after that. So DJ tips.com/transitions, you'll get to a page that's really reserved for the people who buy our Rock the Dance Floor book. Because in the Rock the Dance Floor book, which is the bestselling book on Amazon on how to DJ, we talk you through our seven mixes that will get you through any DJ gig. And the final two are the two I've just described, the effects mixes. So by going to that page and scrolling down to transition six and transition seven, you'll see me demonstrating to you and letting you hear what they sound like, both the echo out and the reverb out mix. And while you're there, have a look at the others as well, because they're a good set of transitions to know. So thank you for that. It's good to have a mixing question.
So this is from Christina. This is totally different. And thank you very much, first, for your honesty here, Christina, uh, and and asking this question so that we can all share. And there'll be a lot of sympathy, uh, for what you're about to say, I'm sure, because you're certainly not alone here. So this is what Christina wrote. Christina wrote, "I'm feeling blocked right now. I want to take my DJ to the next level. There are two DJ contests between November and December, and I'm really excited about what's coming up, but I'm feeling like my energy is already drained. I don't know if I'm overwhelmed by those upcoming events or if my nerves are holding me back. I haven't prepared any good music yet. I haven't prepared a set with my newly added skills either. What could you recommend me, or anyone facing a similar situation, to do in order to feel motivated and have confidence in ourselves?" So thank you very much again, Christina. This is something that we've all felt at times, and it's got another name, which is called imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is where you don't feel you're good enough to be the thing you want to be, in this case, a DJ. You feel you're an imposter in the room. And so the first thing to understand is that everyone feels that, and it doesn't leave you, even if you're a complete professional who's been doing this for half your life. So how do you deal with it, really, is what's the question here? How do you deal with feeling like an outsider and like an imposter in this game of DJing? So apart from understanding you're not alone in it, let's talk through some of the other things that you can do just to build your confidence up a little bit here.
So you've put an awful lot on these two contests here, these two contests coming up between November and December. And there's a couple of problems with that, Christina. The first problem is, you can't control very much about them. You don't know whether they're good contests or bad contests. You don't know how many people are going to enter. You don't know what kind of DJs are going to enter. You don't know the intentions of the people who've organized them. You don't know enough enough to be able to predict whether they're going to be successful for you and your DJing or not. So you're reading a lot into it, you're you're investing a lot into it, whereas at the same time, in the back of your mind, you're thinking, it's like throwing yourself into the void. You don't know what's going to happen because you're not in control of what's going to happen because they're DJ contests. And DJ contests are flaky things. There's so much about them you can't control. So one piece of advice I want to give you here is just have a sense of humor about that and realize that if you're going to play 50 gigs in the next two years, probably five of them will be great, 30 of them will be all right, varying degrees of all right, and 10 or 15 of them will be like, "Oh, what? Oh my God, what happened?" But that's okay, because that's utterly normal, right? So you've got to be prepared to fail. Turning up means that sometimes it's not going to go the way you want it to go. And look, no one has gig after gig after gig, and contest after contest, and mixtape after mixtape, and live stream after live stream where everything goes well. No one.
A second thing to remember here, then, is that just turning up is really what this game is about. I guess it comes down to the fact that DJing is a journey, it's not a destination. I'm a runner. I I run marathons. But I learned years ago that if you put too much into, "I need to do really well on this particular race," in my case, as a marathon runner, then you stop enjoying the journey to get there because because you're so worried about that thing. If you enter lots of races, then suddenly you realize, "Oh, I've had a couple of bad ones, and you know what? I'm still standing." And then it starts to become a little bit less of an of an issue for you, this this one big gig you've built up. So another thing, then, would be to take some more less important bookings and events. Why don't you decide to do a mixtape once a month and share it on Mixcloud or something? Why don't you decide to do a live stream? You'll find that people don't come to live streams like you have two or three people watching, but that's what you want. You're playing to a few people, and the the pressure's off. Why don't you just think about other ways you can perform in this world called DJing that are not big make or break contests? Don't not do the contests, but try and introduce more things as well, because it will start to chip away at this idea that that it's a destination. It's not a destination. DJing is a journey. You're going to be doing this for a long time.
And the final thing is, you know, you said, "I haven't got any music prepared yet. I haven't got any skills practiced yet," etc., etc. Learning to DJ and becoming better at DJing is like putting pennies in a jar. You need to put a lot of pennies in that jar before it starts to look like it's getting full, right? And every time you don't DJ for a few days, you have to take a penny out. So your job is to be DJing a lot at home, little and often. Practice everything you know. The way we teach you as a student of digital DJ tips is the five big areas of DJing: gear, music, mixing, performing, and success. There's so many things you can be doing on a day-to-day basis in all five areas. So consult your courses, consult the book. Find something that suits your energy right now. It doesn't always have to be mixing. You don't always have to say, "Okay, it's time to to to work on my DJ hobby. What mixing am I going to do today?" If you don't feel like it, because there's all the other areas. You can be working on your music library, or learning something about your gear. You could be working on getting some more gigs for yourself, or you could be working on setting your gear up so that you learn how to perform in it. And then doing a dress rehearsal for that. We call them tune-up gigs, where you play a very low-level gig or performance, even if it's only for your family, just to tune you up for when you play the big events, right? There's so much you could be doing. So try and practice little and often, because every time you do, it's a penny in your DJing jar.
So look, Christina, I'd love to talk to you more about this. Do do do come into your course and chat. But I hope I've given you some some ideas here. And also, you know, without being patronizing in any way, it's harder for girls. It just is harder for girls in this world. I'm certainly not the person to advise you for getting over that. But we do have lots of female DJs in our community, as I'm sure you know. So, you know, chat to chat, chat to fellow women doing this thing here. You've got the student hub to go in there, and I know there's lots of people in there who will will be able to help you more with that than I can for obvious reasons. Thank you very much, Christina. Uh, let's move on then.
So this is from, um, John. And John says, "I use Rekordbox on a DDJ FLX6. I have tracks categorized by genres. Is it possible to remove and delete a complete genre easily? I've everything backed up in case they're needed in the future, but there's several genres I will probably never use again." So you've done well here, because you realized, John, that if you haven't played a track in the last year, or you're not going to play in the next year, you should take it out of your system. You should just not have it there. It's getting in the way. So good, you've you've actually expanded it. There's whole genres that you haven't played recently, you can't see yourself playing in the near future, and so I understand. I'm with you. Take them out. Good man. But how do you do it? It's actually very, very easy, John. If you make sure in your DJ software's library, and by the way, this works with all libraries, with all software, if you make sure in your DJ software's library, you have the column selected that shows genre. So you can right-click on the titles at the top of the library, and one of the columns there that you can make sure is showing is genre. And if it's not, then you can select it. With that showing, click on the column header, and that will organize all your music in your library from A to Z. And so then you can see all the tracks in each individual genre together, because all the house tracks will be when you reach H, right? And all the trance tracks will be when you reach T, and so on. So with all the tracks in the genre you don't want together, you click on the first one, and then you hold the shift button down on your controller, and you click on the last one, and they will all highlight. And then you right-click on the lot, and there will be a "Remove from Collection," and there might be some some other options as well, like, "Do you want to take them off your computer as well?" But at the very least, you'll be able to take them off the DJ laptop's software, and therefore they won't show for you. So it's easy, that one, uh, and good luck in shortening your library. It's always a good thing to do. Thank you for the thank you for the question, John.
This is the digital DJ tips podcast, your questions, where we have a live audience of students from digital DJ tips, the DJ School, asking about their DJing in all the big areas of DJing. We've covered some really good stuff about confidence, and about music library, and about using effects in mixing, and so on. And we've got a really varied selection of questions yet to cover today. So thanks for being with us. We're going to push on with a question from another John now, which I can't really answer, so I'm going to throw this one open to our live audience. And if anyone's got anything they want to share before the end of the recording, I will try and weave it in. So John says, "What advice would you give to someone thinking of introducing karaoke into their services? What gear and skills are required to be successful?" So I know Virtual DJ software can handle karaoke files. Karaoke used to have special files, it probably still does, that can put the lyrics on the screen, and that also don't have the vocals. Nowadays, the software can take the vocal out for you. But that's where, because of stems, we've already talked about it. But that's where my knowledge ends. So if anyone knows how karaoke is done on Virtual DJ, you know, I'm assuming that John already DJs, so wants a piece of software that he can DJ on as well as do this on. So I think Virtual DJ is your software. Then please share. I'd love to help John out further with that. But if not, then John, you just get back into the student groups here, and we'll we'll try and help you in there. But thanks for the question. So over to over to our live audience. Karaoke, do your best.
Moving on. Ryan says, "Hi Phil, I'm working on releasing one of my first mixes on Mixcloud. For the first few mixes, would you recommend focusing on mastering techniques specific to only one genre, so maybe house for a more seamless mix? Or would it be more beneficial to mix a series of genres to provide a more unique and exciting mix, it may not be as seamless since a selection of techniques to do that will be harder to learn?" Okay, so Ryan, you're kind of a beginner, but you want to get your music out there on Mixcloud. And my advice would be, while both count work, when you're learning to DJ, the best way to learn to DJ properly, apart from playing in front of other people, which is where you learn the most, but the best way to learn to DJ properly is to pick the right song and then figure out a way to mix it. Because picking the right song is the real skill of DJing. The mixing comes second. And good DJs can mix anything into anything, but the only way they learn that is by trying. So if you're always looking for songs that don't suit your mood, and don't suit your vibe, and don't suit your emotion, but they're easy to mix because you're sticking to one genre or whatever, then you're not really learning the biggest skill of DJing, which is knowing the right song to play right now. And once you know the right song to play right now, practicing how to mix it. So my advice would be two things. One, think very hard about, "Look, I'm going to pick the right tunes and worry about the mixing later." And maybe don't get so hung up on it. But secondly, if you're sharing mixes on a platform like Mixcloud or anywhere, if you're doing anything in public, it makes sense to think about consistency. So how long do you want to do this for? Do you want to do one a month? So if you do, what is it that's going to keep you interested for the next, you know, two or three years as you do one a month and build up this amazing body of work on online? Is it going to be mixing just one genre, or is it going to have to be a mix of things to keep you interested? Do what's what feels right to you. Do what feels like that's something that's closest to who you are, and worry about the technical stuff later. Us DJs worry far too much about the technical stuff, and we spend far too little time thinking about why we're doing it in the first place, which is really sharing our unique take on the music, right? So what is your unique take on the music? Let that guide you. And do let us see your your first mixes when they appear. Do do do keep us in touch with how you get on there, uh, Ryan. Thank you very much.
Right, I'm going to now, uh, go to the comments and I'm going to share some answers to questions and some feedback on questions we've asked so far, because guess what? There's an absolute plethora of, uh, answers in here for the first question I formerly asked you for help with, which is the karaoke one. So this is from, uh, Nathan, who says, "Honestly, I just have KaraFun, which is a monthly subscription. It makes it easy. If someone asks, I don't typically, uh, upcharge for my normal rate as a DJ. Uh, and I've been out of the big karaoke shows for a while." So Nathan is still dabbling, and Nathan uses KaraFun. K A R A F U N. So thank you very much for that. So Don says, "Virtual DJ does do great with karaoke, but KaraFun is another software and streaming service as well." Atgr says, "For karaoke, Virtual DJ is the choice. The lyric function was actually recently removed from Rekordbox, so Virtual DJ is the only game in town when you look at the traditional DJ software for doing that." So we were on the money there. So thank you for confirming that one, Atgr. And so EJ West, EJ Weston, shares something very important here and says, "You need to be able to sing reasonably well in key for when people are too shy to try it, right? So you've got to be your own kind of advert for what you do, and you have to do some of the karaoke yourself." Yeah, I didn't think of that. It's not, it's not an area I know very much about. So thank you, thank you for that. I mean, it's so good to get all of this stuff here. And finally, our final, uh, live comment says, "If you have a mixer with effects and multiple microphone inputs, uh, it's helpful, uh, because obviously so you can have different microphones for different people, and the effects will make people sound good. Yeah, a bit of reverb goes a long way when it comes to to a microphone and for singing, for sure." Thank you very much, everyone.
Right, we're going to move on now. The next question is from Matt, and this is a technical question about cue points. So cue points are when you put little markers on your tracks so you can get back to the places that are important to you. If you're listening to this as a non-DJ, and Matt needs some help with them. So Matt says, "I've got a question about the best way to manage things like my cue points and other other things from DJ software when I'm using different controllers and different software." So Matt says, "I have a Mixstream Pro, and the software that uses is Engine. That's quite right, Matt. And I also have a Pioneer controller, which I use with Serato. And I find that Engine is good for some things, but Serato for others, and I can't export between the two very easily. I know there are tools out there to do it, and Matt mentioned a tool called Lexicon DJ, and there's another one called Mixo DJ, Mixo. But aside from the additional cost of them, when I've used them, they just seem to make everything more complicated. Is there a better and easier solution for keeping two libraries in sync?"
So I'm going to tell you a story now. Just before we started recording the podcast today, I got on a meeting with DJ Jazzy Jeff, who, as some of you will know, he's one of our tutors. And we're we're in the stages of preparing a new course that we're making with Jeff. And so we were in this meeting, and Jeff was telling me that he was about to DJ a really big gig recently, and he was trying to practice. It wasn't gear he was used to, and he was feeling a bit nervous because it wasn't gear he was used to. So he's practicing, he's having a a bit of a a bit of a mix to make sure it's going to be all right. And he said, he said, he just felt that finally, the moment had come when he'd forgotten how to DJ. He said it was just not falling right. It was just, he felt his timing had finally gone. He said, "I don't know if my brain was getting old, or my ears were going, or whatever, but I just couldn't do it. It was just sounding, I couldn't put my finger on why either. It was just sounding wrong." And luckily, he figured out what it was. And it was that all of his cue points were about 20 milliseconds out from where they should be on all of his songs. When he zoomed in into the waveform and looked at the cue, he'd put nicely on the beat, it wasn't there. It was slightly out on all of his songs. And he had tried to sync his songs between two places using one of the pieces of software we've just mentioned. When you try and do this stuff, as you've noticed, Matt, things can go wrong, and it can be complicated, and it's high risk, as Jeff found out. Jeff's been talking to the makers of the software and getting help and trying to sort it out, but it still caused him an awful lot of work, work. And if it can happen to DJ Jazzy Jeff, it can happen to you.
So my first advice is, keep it simple. Do you really need to have those two completely different DJ systems in your life? You know, professional DJs tend not to. One big example being, exception being Jeff, of course, who I'm presuming was getting stuff between Rekordbox and Serato, because Jeff is a a real technical, uh, genius when it comes to this stuff. He's not just a great DJ, but he he loves the technology. But do you really need it? Because it could just be that sticking to one system is the best way to go. Now, use properly, the tools that you've mentioned will work. Also, we have a, uh, community member here who's already been helping, Atgr. And Atgr, aka Mix Master G, makes a piece of software called DJC, which is DJ Conversion Utility. And it's only for Mac. But DJC is a good option, not least because Mix Master G, Atgr, is a good guy, and he he's always there to help his users to get over humps like this when they happen. So there are options, and it might be worth taking a look at DJ Conversion Utility. Just Google it. But my first advice is, stick to one system and keep your life simple. So hopefully, there's some help for you there, Matt. Thank you for the question.
You know what I love about the students of digital DJ tips and of our courses is because these are are recorded in front of an audience of all of our courses. And we have over 20 DJ courses, from the most beginner-focused courses, right up to really geeky software courses, to courses on business and production, and so on. Because we have this wide range of courses, and therefore this wide range of students, we get a wide range of questions on these recordings, which makes it really good fun for people who are listening from outside as well. I hope so. This is a totally different question here from Mike. Mike says, "I would like to ask, what is the best DJ desk to place my equipment on? I'm using a table at the moment, but my back hurts. Thank you so much." Well, look, Mike, of course your back hurts because you're meant to sit at a table, not stand at it. So if you're doing anything on a table where you're leaning over, then your back is going to hurt very, very quickly, and you don't want to be doing that for any length of time at all. I did some live streams over the, uh, the lockdown, the first summer that lockdown kind of lifted a bit and we could get out. So I took the family, and we we stuck stuff, stuff, bits and pieces into a camper van, then we drove around Spain and Portugal. And I also took some DJ gear, and I did some live streams. You might remember them from back in lockdown. And I had to do it on a low table, and it's horrible. It really is horrible. So I know what you mean here, Mike.
So there's a few things. Basically, you've got to get your DJ gear up to the height of a kitchen work surface, because that's designed for you to stand at and work, right? So that's the height you're looking for. And the best ways of doing it are, you can get rises. And rises are just like little feet that you put under the feet of your existing table to make it higher. They're very cheap. But you can also, even cheaper, just get the box that your DJ gear came in. So if you got a DJ controller, it would have come in a box. Stick that box on a normal table and put your gear on top. It might not be quite the same height, but it will certainly help a lot, right? Some people in bars when they're DJing will get the bar to to get a beer crate from around the back and they'll put it on the table they've been asked to DJ on, which which will be a normal bar table where people sit, which immediately gets it up to height to put their DJ gear on. So anything that can raise it up to that height will work. Now, here at digital DJ tips, we've reviewed all kinds of tables. And one that we use at the moment, and I'm very happy with, is made by a company called UDG. So it folds up flat. It looks like the kind of table that a decorator might bring to your house to to hang the wallpaper and paste it on, right? When it's folded up, you can just kind of pick it up with one hand and carry it. But when it opens up, it gives you the perfect height for your gear, but also it's very neat at the front. So you can also take it to gigs. So it it serves two purposes. You can use it at home for practicing, and as you pack your gear away to go to a gig, you can also pack the table away and take it with you. So it might be worth looking at something like that. Or if you're at home and you just want something you've already got, get the ironing board out. Assuming you buy clothes that you have to iron, I don't get the ironing board out. You can adjust just the height of an ironing board. Plant your DJ gear on there. Unless you're playing with records, that's fine. It's not going to look that good, but hey, it solves the problem instantly. It's a good question, Mike. Thank you for raising that one.
So, uh, I'm going to spend a little bit of time now talking to the students who are live with us in the group and answering any questions that have come in along the way, and also giving advice on some of the questions that we've already answered, extra advice from our students. So lots of help, as I thought we would get, for Christina. This is from Timothy, who says, "I had serious imposter syndrome when I started to DJ on Twitch to live stream over four years ago now. I felt like I was competing with professional DJs, but I've worked hard and I can't believe how wildly successful it's become for me." So thank you very much. There's some good encouragement there for Christina from Timothy. Thanks, Timothy, for that. So Chris says, "What effects?" We were talking about effects earlier. So Chris says, "What effects do you use for dancehall and reggae music?" Definitely the echoes. Definitely the big reverbs and the echoes for dancehall and reggae music. And you can set the tail, which is how long it spends disappearing in the mix, to very, very long to get those big tap effect, effect, dubby style, dubby style sounds that are so that are so common in that style of music. Thank you very much for that.
So this is from Steve, who says, "I would like some advice on which direction I should take in my learning. I have got a fairly similar DJ style to yours, Phil, which is kind of a, let the songs speak, let the songs play, house music style, kind of understated. It's the way I DJ." So that's the way Steve DJs as well. And I've mastered the core skills to the point where I'm comfortable playing out and doing intro-outro mixes. I've got a well-organized collection, but I haven't touched on what I would call more advanced optional skills. So if you were in my boots, what more advanced skills would you suggest taking a look at?" So Steve, I would suggest that you take a look at the extra features on your DJ gear, because nowadays DJ gear has got stuff that you're possibly not using. So stems is a good one. So you can instantly bring tracks in with the acapella. And that means that you can, instead of overlapping the intros and the outros, you can overlap a bigger portion of the tracks. So instead of overlapping 30 or 45 seconds of two tracks, you could overlap maybe a minute and a half. And at this point, you can look at swapping the vocal from one tune with the vocal from another. There's ways of doing that to make it sound good. One of the ways is making sure that they're in a compatible musical key. So that's another way I would look to just just push that envelope a little bit more, Steve. And effects, we've already talked about effects. Basically, you you're looking for inspiration from either other DJs who you admire, or from places where you actually get taught things that you can then basically pinch. One of the places that I would recommend is our is our special specialized mixing courses. We've got several. And the one I would suggest for you, Steve, would be our House Mixing Mastery course. So head to digital DJ tips.com and look for the House Mixing Mastery course, which takes the kind of music you're comfortable playing, but just gives you stuff you maybe haven't thought of. You know, the problem with music which is designed to be mixed is that we tend to fall back on doing the same thing over and over again. If you're an open format DJ, which means a DJ that plays all kinds of genres and BPMs and so on, then you you're forced to do more creative stuff because the music wasn't necessarily made to do DJ transitions with. But when you've got music that starts and stops with sections that are just drums and so on, you do get a little bit stuck in your ways if you're not too, uh, if you're not too diligent about finding new ways of doing it, right? So that's why we made that course to kind of make it easier for people to, uh, to do that.
So I found, says EJ Weston, "I found that songs that have disparate bit rates sometimes get beat grid errors." So this is where you have your software layer grid over the song, which happens automatically usually when you import a song to show you where the beats and bars are. And so this is all about when the the song format, basically the way it's it's the way it's been provided to you, um, technically, is different, uh, you get different errors, uh, but it's usually because of the encoder rather than the bit rate. So without getting too geeky here, songs are encoded in various different ways in order to get them to you efficiently. So you might have MP3 files, or AAC files, or FLAC files, and so on. And sometimes that can introduce things that kind of mess up a little bit the way your DJ software deals with them. It's kind of an edge case. I I've seen it, but not very often. And Mix Master G, who is one of our, uh, as I've mentioned a couple of times in this podcast recording, is one of our, um, help, not helpers, just one a community member here who's very valued, but also makes one of those pieces of software we've talked about, being the DJ Conversion Utility to move your DJ collection from one to another, one piece of software to another. And on, uh, his YouTube channel, uh, there is a video there that will show you exactly what the problem is and how to fix it. So I'm going to push you towards that by putting it into the show notes for the show today. So I will make sure I cut and paste that into those notes. So do keep an eye out for that. Go to the show notes. It's a good chance for me to say, if you're not already subscribed to this podcast, then do subscribe. And do take a look at the show notes, because we do occasionally put, uh, our our links and so on that we discuss into those show notes when it's something that's not easy to read out. So take a look at the show notes for this edition. And if you're not subscribed, hit that button in your platform. We're everywhere you normally get your podcasts.
So a few of you saying thank you for the help on setting up a DJ space. You know, we talked about getting your gear to the right height, but I think the the other thing to remember about your DJ space is, if you can get it set up so it's permanently set up, it's a lot better than having to take it down every time. It's a bit like going to the gym, right? If you ever joined a gym and ended up not going, it's not, it's not the being at the gym that's the problem, it's the getting there, and the getting ready, and getting to the point where you're ready to do what you actually want to do, right? And it's the same with any hobby, it's the same with anything that takes setting up. If you can be ready to do it within seconds, then you're more likely to do it, and you're a lot more likely to do more of it. And having your DJ gear all properly set up, ready to go, so you literally have to just take the take the dust cover or the blanket off it and hit start, and you're you're there, is a really good idea. So try and find a place in your house, often there's not a whole room you can use, but a corner or something somewhere where you can have your DJ gear set up, and it feels like a nice place to go. Maybe a nice big picture of, you know, the crowd staring at the DJ when the DJ is you, stood there looking at the wall, right? Things like that. Think about your space, light it properly, get the speakers near to you, just think about where would I want to DJ? How can I make this area feel good for DJing in it? It does help.
So this is from The Rockus, and it's a question about the XDJ AZ, the XDJ AZ, the new Alpha Theta, Pioneer DJ unit. And this says, "Is it possible to record on either USB?" It's a good question because they have two USB sockets, and usually you can only record on one of them. And I think you can probably only record on one of them with this one. It's something I would have to check, but I don't think that's something that's changed. I'm interested as to why you would want to record on both of them, uh, but anyway, thank you for that. And just to end off with, then I have a little bit of feedback on the effects to use for dancehall and reggae. And Michael's given me this and says, "Look, dancehall and reggae is mixed so quickly nowadays that actually the effects are becoming secondary. It's more important to use dancehall samples dropped in over the top." So that's brilliant. I mean, these genres have always used samples, haven't they? There's always been samples that, you know, they started off the whole thing about dropping samples in, I would say, over DJ sets, sound systems. But yeah, thank you very much for that. Thanks for sharing. And I am actually going to, uh, end off with, uh, Line Quad, who says, "This is especially for other women. If I can help in any way, I would love to. I've dealt a lot with imposter syndrome, with confidence problems, but today I've played four gigs with the training from digital DJ tips." I guess you don't mean today, but you mean up to today, right? So this is wonderful. The community helping the community. And so if you're one of our students listening to this, you dive into into the student hub and ask, and Line is there as another female DJ to help you. And that is specifically going out to Christina, and to every other female DJ. There's too few of you in our community, frankly. But but, uh, you are all there and active in our student group, and it's [Music] great.
That's where we're going to leave it for today. Thank you very much to our amazing students for providing the questions, and also for helping me throughout the recording to give better answers to those questions. Remember, if you'd like to have a question featured, you need to be a digital DJ tips DJ School student. Come to digital DJ tips.com and look at our whole array of DJ courses and programs that we've got. Join any of them, and you'll be admitted to our student group where these questions are asked every month. Meanwhile, from me here in the studio, please do give us a five-star review on your platform if you've enjoyed this. But it's only left for me to say, get good, get out there, make the moments. And until the next podcast, bye-bye for now.